Sunday, 7 December 2014

Christmas Calendar - Day 7

December 7th, you'll find out that Jolla phone has a nice feature in its multitasking for music apps.

Today's background for an ambience is a winter sunset view from Pennsylvania, photographed by Andrew Crouthamel

Christmas calendar - day 7

Share and Shout! Your friends might read it.

Tip of the day

Pre-requirements: Several music apps, in this example:

QuasarMX (Sailfish OS) for your local media files in the phone

Spotify (Android) for shuffle playing albums in this service

Quick Radio (Sailfish OS) for self tuned internet radio channels

Of course there are other possibilities as well, you can find several players both at Jolla Store and at your selected Android app stores:

Launch QuasarMX

Select song

Swipe-from-right/left to drop the app to your home screen

Launch Quick Radio

Select internet radio stream

Swipe that too

You have two app covers on your home screen, and you probably hear the radio. Try to switch music in between them with a swipe-right gestures on top of the app covers (no need to open the apps). Working? Leave one playing, or not, and

Launch Spotify

select your album / play list

tap on "Shuffle play"

You can soon hear Android taking over the audio channel. Swipe this app to your home screen as well, just like the earlier ones, with a swipe-from-side (left or right, starting from outside the display)

Soon, if you're using the free version of the Spotify, you might hear some commercials between the songs. Especially for this, today's tip is quite nasty:

Select PLAY in one of the Sailfish apps (swipe-right gesture on top of the cover)

Spotify actually keeps playing on the background, but you can't hear it while your Sailfish player takes over the audio channel

Select PAUSE, using the same cover action as when you selected play, and your phone's audio channel is automatically given back to Android

Try with more apps, maybe you can make your Jolla a nice juke box - or find the limits of multitasking in your phone.

Leave a comment if you can have three Sailfish OS apps playing at the same time - I haven't figured that out yet.

Note that this "jukebox" trick only works with one Android player, as the nice cover actions are provided only for Sailfish apps. Sure, you can multitask with Android players as well, you just need to open the apps for play/pause on those.

Make it yours!

Christmas background for Jolla, day 7

Image below is cropped to size 540 x 1600, ideal as background for Jolla phone. For easy add, long hold to download it to your gallery. You'll find it in your photos, and you can create an ambience.

Adding the ambience as a favorite (tap on the star icon) adds it to your ambience quick switch menu (flick right or left from your home screen)